placestats

Armed conflict present vs. Child stunting

Holds up after adjusting for income

Across 155 countries, Armed conflict present and Child stunting rise and fall together at r = +0.48 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). Comparing only countries with similar income (GDP per person) shrinks it to +0.31 (q = 0.012, allowing for the many pairs tested). Much of the first figure is that both measures rise with national income, but a weak positive link remains.

Comparing countries across the middle half of armed conflict present, 0 to 1 points, child stunting is worse by 12.6% of children under 5 at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 5.77% of children under 5.

Link before adjusting (r)+0.475p = 4.1e-10 · 155 countries
After adjusting for national income+0.314p = 7.2e-5 · likely range [+0.16, +0.45]
p, allowing for regions0.000standard error 0.044 · 7 regions
Check for luck (q)0.012across 12,497 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Armed conflict present · 1 if any conflict, else 0link with income -0.39 · moderate
Child stunting · % of children under 5link with income -0.80 · proxy

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

Armed conflict present · 1 if any conflict, else 0 →Child stunting · % of children under 5 →011%55.3%Afghanistan: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 42% of children under 5Angola: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 47.7% of children under 5Albania: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 7.4% of children under 5Argentina: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 10.7% of children under 5Armenia: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 6.2% of children under 5Australia: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 3.1% of children under 5Azerbaijan: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 6.8% of children under 5Burundi: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 55.3% of children under 5Belgium: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 2.6% of children under 5Benin: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 33.2% of children under 5Burkina Faso: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 19.5% of children under 5Bangladesh: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 25.1% of children under 5Bulgaria: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 5.5% of children under 5Bahrain: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 4.6% of children under 5Bosnia and Herzegovina: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 7.9% of children under 5Belarus: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 1.1% of children under 5Belize: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 11.7% of children under 5Bolivia: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 10.7% of children under 5Brazil: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 8.9% of children under 5Barbados: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 5.8% of children under 5Brunei Darussalam: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 9.9% of children under 5Bhutan: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 17.9% of children under 5Botswana: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 21% of children under 5Central African Republic: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 38.9% of children under 5Chile: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 1.7% of children under 5China: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 4.5% of children under 5Cote d'Ivoire: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 20.3% of children under 5Cameroon: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 27.2% of children under 5Congo, Dem. Rep.: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 44.1% of children under 5Congo, Rep.: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 16.3% of children under 5Colombia: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 11.6% of children under 5Comoros: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 17.4% of children under 5Cabo Verde: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 5.3% of children under 5Costa Rica: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 10.6% of children under 5Czechia: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 2.4% of children under 5Germany: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 2.2% of children under 5Djibouti: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 20.9% of children under 5Dominican Republic: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 5.6% of children under 5Algeria: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 8.9% of children under 5Ecuador: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 17.7% of children under 5Egypt, Arab Rep.: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 12.9% of children under 5Estonia: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 1.3% of children under 5Ethiopia: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 35.5% of children under 5Finland: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 1.7% of children under 5Fiji: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 7.2% of children under 5Gabon: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 13.7% of children under 5United Kingdom: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 3.5% of children under 5Georgia: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 4.7% of children under 5Ghana: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 15.6% of children under 5Guinea: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 26.6% of children under 5Gambia, The: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 14% of children under 5Guinea-Bissau: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 28.3% of children under 5Equatorial Guinea: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 17.1% of children under 5Greece: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 2% of children under 5Guatemala: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 44.6% of children under 5Guyana: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 7.1% of children under 5Honduras: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 17.9% of children under 5Haiti: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 21.6% of children under 5Indonesia: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 22.6% of children under 5India: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 32.9% of children under 5Ireland: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 2.2% of children under 5Iran, Islamic Rep.: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 4.8% of children under 5Iraq: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 9.4% of children under 5Jamaica: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 6.9% of children under 5Jordan: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 7.7% of children under 5Japan: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 5.2% of children under 5Kazakhstan: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 4.4% of children under 5Kenya: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 17.9% of children under 5Kyrgyz Republic: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 11% of children under 5Cambodia: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 22% of children under 5Kiribati: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 14.7% of children under 5Korea, Rep.: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 1.8% of children under 5Kuwait: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 4.5% of children under 5Lao PDR: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 29.9% of children under 5Lebanon: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 10.1% of children under 5Liberia: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 26.9% of children under 5Libya: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 9.2% of children under 5St. Lucia: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 2.8% of children under 5Sri Lanka: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 10.1% of children under 5Lesotho: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 35% of children under 5Lithuania: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 1.6% of children under 5Latvia: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 1.7% of children under 5Morocco: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 13.7% of children under 5Moldova: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 4.2% of children under 5Madagascar: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 38.4% of children under 5Maldives: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 14.2% of children under 5Mexico: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 13.1% of children under 5Marshall Islands: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 30% of children under 5North Macedonia: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 3.8% of children under 5Mali: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 23.2% of children under 5Malta: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 3.5% of children under 5Myanmar: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 24.5% of children under 5Montenegro: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 8% of children under 5Mongolia: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 7.1% of children under 5Mozambique: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 37% of children under 5Mauritania: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 21.5% of children under 5Mauritius: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 7.8% of children under 5Malawi: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 33.2% of children under 5Malaysia: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 24.3% of children under 5Namibia: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 16.4% of children under 5Niger: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 48.3% of children under 5Nigeria: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 33.8% of children under 5Netherlands: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 1.6% of children under 5Nepal: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 26% of children under 5Naoero: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 16% of children under 5Oman: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 12.9% of children under 5Pakistan: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 33.6% of children under 5Panama: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 14% of children under 5Peru: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 10.6% of children under 5Philippines: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 27.7% of children under 5Papua New Guinea: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 47.6% of children under 5Poland: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 1% of children under 5Portugal: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 3.2% of children under 5Paraguay: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 3.2% of children under 5West Bank and Gaza: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 8% of children under 5Qatar: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 5.4% of children under 5Romania: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 7% of children under 5Rwanda: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 29.8% of children under 5Saudi Arabia: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 11.1% of children under 5Sudan: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 35.4% of children under 5Senegal: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 17.2% of children under 5Singapore: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 2.8% of children under 5Solomon Islands: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 29.8% of children under 5Sierra Leone: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 25.2% of children under 5El Salvador: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 9.4% of children under 5Somalia, Fed. Rep.: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 23.9% of children under 5Serbia: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 4.6% of children under 5Sao Tome and Principe: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 10% of children under 5Suriname: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 8% of children under 5Eswatini: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 18.9% of children under 5Seychelles: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 6.2% of children under 5Syrian Arab Republic: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 23.5% of children under 5Chad: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 31.5% of children under 5Togo: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 23% of children under 5Thailand: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 12.3% of children under 5Tajikistan: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 13.1% of children under 5Turkmenistan: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 6.5% of children under 5Timor-Leste: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 45.4% of children under 5Tonga: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 1.6% of children under 5Trinidad and Tobago: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 7.8% of children under 5Tunisia: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 8.9% of children under 5Turkiye: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 5.5% of children under 5Tuvalu: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 5.3% of children under 5Tanzania: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 29.9% of children under 5Uganda: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 23.5% of children under 5Ukraine: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 11.7% of children under 5Uruguay: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 6.5% of children under 5United States: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 4.2% of children under 5Uzbekistan: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 6.7% of children under 5Viet Nam: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 19.2% of children under 5Vanuatu: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 31% of children under 5Samoa: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 8.4% of children under 5South Africa: 1 1 if any conflict, else 0, 24.4% of children under 5Zambia: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 32.3% of children under 5Zimbabwe: 0 1 if any conflict, else 0, 23.7% of children under 5AGOBDIBLRESTIRNLSOMDGNERPOLQATTLSTUR

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

MethodrpCountries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted+0.4754.1e-10155
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted+0.4773.6e-10155
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income+0.3147.2e-5155
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income+0.3176.4e-5155

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 155 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: +0.161 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from +0.292 (without GTM) to +0.342 (without TLS). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: TLS (+0.028).

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

nr
East Asia & Pacific26+0.32
Europe & Central Asia32+0.40
Latin America & Caribbean24+0.44
Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan20+0.21
Sub-Saharan Africa46+0.33

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

nr
Poorest third52+0.19
Middle third51+0.44
Richest third52+0.31

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

nr
Christians86+0.35
Muslims48+0.27

By last european coloniser

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

nr
France25-0.09
Never a European colony21+0.53
Spain18+0.47
United Kingdom52+0.39

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = +0.310 after dropping 1 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 25years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Within countries over time, there is no link that is clearly more than chance (r = +0.026, comparing each country only with itself over the years, and each year only with the same year elsewhere). Whatever the cross-country picture shows, countries whose armed conflict present moved did not tend to see their child stunting move with it.

Across countries (adjusted)+0.314for comparison
Within countries-0.038each country vs itself
…and vs the same year elsewhere+0.026q = 0.627 · 161 countries
Year-on-year changes+0.006q = 0.635
Read with care.
  • Almost all of the second indicator's variation is between countries, so the within-country estimate rests on a small part of the data.

4,025 country-years (one country in one year), 161 countries, 2000–2024, about 25 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 40% for Armed conflict present, 9% for Child stunting. The margins of error allow for each country appearing many times, and for each year’s value being close to the year before.

Year-to-year changes are a cautious test, not a final answer. Looking only at changes from one year to the next removes each country’s own trends. But it also makes measurement mistakes louder, which pulls the results toward zero. A near-zero result here is weak evidence of no link, not proof.

With one measure years behind the other

0.10−0.1-100+10years Child stunting trails Armed conflict present →lag -10: r = 0.013 (n = 2,576)lag -9: r = 0.028 (n = 2,737)lag -8: r = 0.032 (n = 2,898)lag -7: r = 0.039 (n = 3,059)lag -6: r = 0.037 (n = 3,220)lag -5: r = 0.031 (n = 3,381)lag -4: r = 0.039 (n = 3,542)lag -3: r = 0.031 (n = 3,703)lag -2: r = 0.032 (n = 3,864)lag -1: r = 0.025 (n = 4,025)lag +0: r = 0.026 (n = 4,025)lag +1: r = 0.021 (n = 4,025)lag +2: r = 0.020 (n = 4,025)lag +3: r = 0.034 (n = 4,025)lag +4: r = 0.041 (n = 4,025)lag +5: r = 0.043 (n = 4,025)lag +6: r = 0.045 (n = 4,025)lag +7: r = 0.051 (n = 4,025)lag +8: r = 0.049 (n = 4,025)lag +9: r = 0.049 (n = 4,025)lag +10: r = 0.040 (n = 4,025)

Same year (lag 0): +0.026. A peak away from zero does not show which comes first. These series change slowly — this year’s value is close to last year’s. That makes the curve smooth and nearly symmetric, whatever produced the data. Even a sharp peak at one lag (a gap of some years) would not prove that one measure changes the other.

The data


1 if any conflict, else 0
% of children under 5		Years
South Africa ZAF124.4%2025, 2024
Ukraine UKR111.7%2025, 2024
Uganda UGA123.5%2025, 2024
Tanzania TZA129.9%2025, 2024
Turkiye TUR15.5%2025, 2024
Thailand THA112.3%2025, 2024
Togo TGO123%2025, 2024
Chad TCD131.5%2025, 2024
Syrian Arab Republic SYR123.5%2025, 2024
Somalia, Fed. Rep. SOM123.9%2025, 2024
Sudan SDN135.4%2025, 2024
Saudi Arabia SAU111.1%2025, 2024
Rwanda RWA129.8%2025, 2024
Qatar QAT15.4%2025, 2024
West Bank and Gaza PSE18%2025, 2024

Uppsala Conflict Data Program, Georeferenced Event Dataset; rate per population from Our World in Data
World Bank, World Development Indicators

Sources

Armed conflict present

Whether an armed conflict is taking place in the country

Uppsala Conflict Data Program, Uppsala University · via Our World in Data · CC BY 4.0 · updated annual

One if any armed conflict took place on the country's territory that year, and zero if not. That makes it the site's first true yes-or-no measure. A link with a yes-or-no measure is a fair one: it compares the countries at war with the countries not at war. It answers a different question from the death rate: whether a country has a war at all, not how many people die. The two are treated as measuring the same thing, so their pair reads as two views of one thing, not as a finding. It is kept out of the crime score. A yes-or-no flag averaged into a combined score beside a rate would count the same conflicts twice.

Child stunting

Prevalence of stunting, height for age, modelled estimate (% of children under 5)

UNICEF, WHO and World Bank Joint Child Malnutrition Estimates · CC BY 4.0 · updated quarterly

An estimate from a statistical model. The agencies fit a model to household surveys and predict every country and year. So this is smoother than the surveys behind it, and it has values for years nobody measured. The survey-only series never reaches sixty countries in any year.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2024–2025. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 7 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 12,497 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Armed conflict present and Child stunting

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Armed conflict present changes Child stunting, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.

More links with Armed conflict present or Child stunting